The reason I practise Yoga

I am googling the 10 best yoga websites http://www.elephantjournal.com and come across the as number 7 listed online yoga class http://www.yogatoday.com/ and I am thinking, gosh how can these teachers have such an amazing teaching practice? How can they afford the leisure to practice some awesome postures in the middle of nowhere in a pristine, mountainous prairie with nothing but the wind blowing around their ears? Or be part of a beautiful serene studio somewhere in America.

My assumptions go further in surely these people don’t have any kids, which is one of the reasons we live in Kuala Lumpur as it has a good choice of international schools. Then I continue thinking of the “soundtrack” of cars passing by and the occasional honk and false car alarm which doesn’t seem to disturb any of the munching patrons of the restaurant downstairs; and the intermingled smell of typical Asian foods with my just dispersed essential oils as the smell of food wafts into the window while we move from pose to pose in the studio I teach. The lifeline of our focus is the gigantic tree outside of the only window. That is if it doesn’t brutally get trimmed naked every couple of years. Boy do we need to practice Pratyahara or non-fascination of the senses how Donna Farhi describes it in her book Yoga, Mind, Body & Spirit: A Return to Wholeness (http://www.amazon.com/Donna-Farhi).

And it is because I practice and teach Yoga that I can put up with not-so-perfect circumstances in life. It has carried me for 29 years through many countries and places. All I needed was the exact space of my Yoga mat, whether it was in a hotel room in noisy New Dehli, on top of a mountain somewhere in the Himalayas, facing the ocean in New Zealand or in our house in Kuala Lumpur. Yoga gives me: joy and equanimity no matter where or how.

And by the way, my poses are not always as perfect as Desiree Rumbaughs (the pic), who happens to be one of my most inspiring and beloved teachers I was fortunate enough to have learnt from http://www.desireerumbaugh.com/.